Ghost Girl by Torey Hayden Page B

You want to come up here? What about dinner? Shall we have dinner somewhere and talk about everything then?”
    That sounded divine.
    Arkie and I met for dinner in a small, extremely popular restaurant in Falls River called Tottie’s. By the time we arrived, the place was congested and noisy, and we were escorted to a table the size of an average serving tray and located at the junction between the kitchen and the public toilets.
    “Hi there! I’m Keith,” a young man cried enthusiastically when he saw us. “I’m your waiter for the evening, and our chef tonight is David.”
    “Great. I’m Arkie and I’m your customer, and, listen, Keith, haven’t you got anything better than this?” Arkie gestured widely to indicate the table’s location.
    “Now, let’s see, Arkie, what have you booked? Party of two? Yup? That’s what I’ve got.”
    “Well, that’s what I’ve got, too, but I wasn’t planning on spending my evening conferring with David and I pretty much can from here, so what do you say we give him some peace? Suppose you find us somewhere else.”
    Thunderstruck by Arkie’s calm audacity, I shrank meekly behind. Keith, too, seemed a bit stunned. He checked his list again, then glanced around, as if seeking help. “Well, I suppose there is a table over there by the fireplace. They haven’t arrived yet … I suppose you could probably have that one and then …”
    “Good,” said Arkie. “I suppose we could.”
    “Now,” said Keith as we sat down, “can I bring you girls some wine? We have three choices of house wine, sold by the glass, the half carafe, or the carafe. Or perhaps you’d like Debbie to bring you the wine list.”
    Arkie, covering her eyes with one hand in mock exasperation, lifted a finger and looked over at me. “Makes you sorry for our generation, doesn’t it?” she whispered.
    Arkie and I spent a pleasant twenty minutes or so in choosing our meals, ordering, and then, just small talk. As with our first meeting, I was greatly impressed with Arkie, her calm assertiveness, her relaxed friendliness. Talking with her was like being back with my colleagues at the clinic: a nice mix of wit, personal topics, and shoptalk.
    The conversation eventually came around to Jadie. I told Arkie how Jadie had been coming in to see me after school, how she locked the door and seemed to need the safety of the cloakroom before she could be wholly open. I mentioned the doll play with its faintly sexual overtones, and finally, I spoke of Tashee, Miss Ellie, and the others.
    “Whee,” Arkie muttered when I’d finished. “You’ve got yourself a live one there, don’t you?”
    “Let’s just say that I don’t think we have to make any immediate plans for moving her back to the regular classroom.”
    “Well, no, there’s a point. But where do you think all this is coming from?” Arkie asked. “When I was working with her, I got no wind of this. What do you make of it? Is it just fantasy?”
    “I don’t know. This is the problem for me. At this point, I honestly don’t know what to think about her behavior. In the classroom, I get an extremely withdrawn, hunched-over, shuffling mouse. She’s cooperative, concentrates well, performs academically, and yet hardly makes a spontaneous movement. In the cloakroom, I get this brash, noisy, provocative creature who swings from the pipes and flings the toys around. Never in all my career have I come across such extremes.”
    “Dual personality?”
    I wrinkled my nose. “Can’t really imagine it.”
    “Do you think she could be hallucinating? Particularly when she’s talking about all these ‘Dallas’ characters?” Arkie asked.
    “I’d hate to think that,” I replied, and I would. My worst fear was that Jadie was genuinely losing occasional contact with reality, since this would indicate a much more severe emotional problem than elective mutism. The prognosis for a child suffering from any kind of hallucinatory psychosis is very poor, and